Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz have made their debut as the presumptive Democratic presidential ticket, kicking off a campaign against Donald Trump and JD Vance in front of a roaring crowd in Philadelphia rally.
The governor stepped on stage in front of an electric crowd at Temple University’s Liacouras Center on Tuesday just hours after Harris announced him as her running mate, ending the closely watched contest for the next potential vice president by choosing the seasoned midwestern politician, military veteran and former school teacher with a progressive track record.
Harris told a crowd of roughly 12,000 people that she “set out to find a partner who can build this brighter future” that she has envisioned in her campaign.
“A leader who can unite this nation and move us forward, a fighter for the middle class, a patriot who believes as I do the extraordinary promise of America, a promise of freedom, opportunity and justice not just for some but for all,” she said.
“I’ve found such a leader: Governor Tim Walz of the great state of Minnesota.”
Walz, 60, enlisted in the US Army National Guard at 17 years old and served for 24 years, then spent more than two decades teaching high school and coaching football before entering politics.
In her introduction in Philadelphia, Harris noted that Walz had served as a faculty adviser for a high school gay-straight alliance group, and “Tim knew the signal it would send to have a football coach get involved.”
Walz “makes people feel they belong and inspires them to dream big, and that’s the kind of vice president he will be,” she added, “and that’s the kind of vice president America deserves.”
He represented the state in the House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017 and is now in the middle of his second term as Minnesota’s governor, recently launching onto the national radar with his no-nonsense assessment of the GOP’s platform and the “weird” agenda behind it.
In the governor’s office, Walz has ushered through a series of popular progressive policies, including protections for abortion rights and LGBT+ Minnesotans, a free breakfast and lunch program for public school children, and free college for students from low-income families.
“Minnesota’s strength comes from our values, our commitment to working together, to seeing past our differences, to always be willing to lend a helping hand,” Walz told the crowd.
Trump, on the other hand, “doesn’t know the first thing about service, because he’s too busy serving himself,” accordingto Walz.
The former president “weakens our economy to strengthen his own hand, mocks our laws, and sows chaos and division, and that’s to say nothing of his record as president,” said Walz, who said Trump “froze” during the Covid-19 crisis, “drove the economy into the ground,” and “make no mistake: violent crime was up under Donald Trump.”
“That’s not counting the crimes he committed,” he added.
Walz said he “can’t wait to debate” his GOP counterpart JD Vance.
“I grew up with in the heartland, JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a best seller trashing that community,” he said.
“Come on. That’s not what Middle America is,” he said. “I can’t wait to debate the guy … That is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”
Harris’s announcement arrived roughly three months before Election Day and two weeks before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where the Harris-Walz ticket will formally receive the party’s nomination.
After President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign and endorsed Harris as the party’s nominee, the vice president quickly collected endorsements from prominent Democrats and pledges from delegates to clinch the nomination, with record-breaking fundraising numbers that have eclipsed Republicans’ multi-million dollar war chest.
The campaign raised another $20 million within the hours after Harris announced Walz as her running mate, according to the campaign.
A racially diverse crowd in Philadelphia included a pair of gray-haired white men sporting shirts declaring themselves “Old White Men for Harris and Freedom.”
“It’s as clear as the T-shirt says,” Bernie Strain told The Independent. “It’s about two old white men liking our Social Security, liking our Medicare, liking our freedom, liking our democracy — we’ll lose it if Trump gets elected.”
Strain said that his son, a US Marine, had served a pair of tours at the base that was struck by Iran-backed militants in Iraq on Monday.
“He’s no loser and he’s no sucker for serving in the United States’s service, and Trump’s not going to call my son a loser or a sucker,” he said. “Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.”
The rally even attracted former Republican members of Congress, including former Pennsylvania congressman James Greenwood, who told The Independent that he understood Biden had to stand down after his June 27 debate against Trump.
Greenwood described the vibe after Biden stood down as “like an electric charge.”
“The excitement, the volunteers, the fundraising, so everyone’s pretty excited,” he said.
Andrew Feinberg reports from Philadelphia
